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Living off the gridiron

Last Sunday, as most of you probably know, was Super Bowl XLVII and the fair-weather sports enthusiasts of K&K once again continued our annual tradition of not bothering to watch.

It’s not just our innate aversion to large Roman numerals or grotesque American consumerism. While we can appreciate the spectacle value of juiced-up millionaires doing their best to injure each other and invoking the Good Lord’s name while doing it, we just don’t see the appeal of a game with so much stoppage in play that the constant commercial breaks are considered the actual highlight.

It seems even stranger that an estimated eight million Canadians tuned in to the event given those crowd-pleasing new ads, which cost around $4 million a pop, aren’t even available north of the border.

So instead of, say, watching an Israeli supermodel French kiss a chubby nerd for GoDaddy.com, Oprah Winfrey salute the troops on behalf of Chrysler or a PR disaster unfold in real time with Volkswagen’s inexplicable decision to kick off Black History Month by making some random white actor imitate a Jamaican, Vancouver viewers were instead treated to the usual CTV ads such as Cenovus extolling the virtues of Alberta’s oilsands, B.C. Liberals attack ads and repeated promos for the network’s locally shot new cop show Motive.

The last Super Bowl we actually sat through start to finish was 12 years ago when, oddly enough, alleged non-murderer Ray Lewis again led the Baltimore Ravens to football’s holy land. The half-time show featured sinewy senior Steven Tyler of Aerosmith dirty dancing with a then-teenaged Britney Spears while butchering the classic song “Walk This Way.” It was a sight so traumatizing we vowed never to watch again.

It’s not as if the good parts aren’t all available online shortly afterward anyway.